Blogaround

1. You Can Buy A Malaria Net (November 7) "My ability to buy a bednet isn’t dependent on the behavior of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. I can buy a bednet even if Joe Biden waited too long to drop out of the race, or the Kamala Harris campaign was too risk-averse, or the Democratic Party elites need to do a better job of disciplining their base. Buying a bednet in no way requires appeasing the Americans with the most confused, ignorant, incoherent, and self-contradictory beliefs, otherwise known as 'swing voters.'"

2. Steps For Transgender People Preparing For Federal Crackdowns Under Trump (November 12)

Also from Erin Reed: Opinion: The Trans Sports Attacks Were Never About Sports (November 16) "But by the end of 2023, the reality was clear: every state that passed a transgender sports ban went on to enact some of the most draconian anti-trans laws in history."

3. The 5Ds of Bystander Intervention (via) 

4. Elon Musk is sued over $1 million election giveaway (November 6) 

5. Sub-Radio - Bi Bi Bi (2023)

6. redbeardace says sex is like "bins at the Goodwill Outlet" and I love this analogy.

7. Harris lost the war of “ambient information” (November 18) "That’s how you wind up with a result like this: Harris won handily among people who were paying attention, but got clobbered among voters who just 'knew things' without checking them out."

Orientation is About Finding the Pattern

A set of (x,y) data points with a best-fit line drawn through them. The data is basically linearly correlated, but the fit isn't perfect. Image source.

The topic for the August 2023 Carnival of Aces is "Asexuality and Orientation." So, I want to talk about how orientation labels are about describing the overall patterns of your feelings/experiences. It doesn't mean every single feeling you've ever felt fits the definition for that orientation label. It's about the pattern.

Here's a bunch of examples. First I have examples about orientation, and then I want to talk about finding or not finding patterns in my own life, related to dating, etc.

Here we go:

I once met a lesbian who was dating a trans man. This was confusing to me, because... "lesbian" means she's only attracted to women... is she saying that trans men are women? Uh that seems... not very trans-accepting. But thinking about it now, I don't think that's it. I think the overall pattern that describes her attraction is, she's attracted to women, and her trans man boyfriend is something of an exception to that. Or perhaps she's attracted to him because he has some of the qualities that she finds attractive in women, even though he's a man. The overall pattern of her being a lesbian is still true, but that doesn't mean every single thing in her life has to fit the simple definition of "lesbian."

Related to that, I remember seeing a post online where someone said, "I'm a lesbian, but my boyfriend was grandfathered in." (I find it HILARIOUS to use the word "grandfathered" here.) I guess she means, she already had a boyfriend, and then she figured out she's a lesbian, but she wants to stay in the relationship with him. (There could be all kinds of reasons she would choose to do that.) So "lesbian" is the term that best fits the overall pattern of her feelings/ how she wants other people to see her, but her boyfriend is an exception.

And here's a question: How do non-binary people fit into the straight/gay/bi/pan framework? If someone is, for example, a straight man, that means he's attracted to women. Is he attracted to non-binary people? Should we not use the terms "straight" and "gay" because they treat non-binary people like they don't exist? My answer to that is, most people know very few non-binary people (if they know any at all), and non-binary people's gender expression is all over the map- is it even possible to make generalizations, to find the "pattern" that summarizes your attraction to non-binary people? I think most people simply don't have enough data to find a pattern, so it doesn't make sense to use an orientation label that indicates "I'm attracted to non-binary people" or "I'm not attracted to non-binary people." If I'm a straight woman, and I'm attracted to 1 out of 100 men, and I've met 5 non-binary people and I'm not attracted to any of them, well, who can say if it's because I'm just not attracted to non-binary people, or if it's because I don't have enough data? It wouldn't make sense to draw conclusions one way or the other.

(See also this post from Siggy, Attraction to nonbinary people, and this video from Verity Ritchie, Everyone is Attracted to Nonbinary People)

Another example: In the comments section of my post Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality, sildarmillion said, "For me personally, I ID as ace, as I've only felt sexual attraction to one male person, so I could be ace and hetero for all I know, but idk, I don't feel a strong connection with the Heterosexual label, so I don't identify with that label." This was surprising to me, because I thought being a woman, and having at least 1 experience of being attracted to a man, and not any other genders, that falls under the category of straight/hetero. But for her, there's no pattern to it. It just happened 1 time, so it doesn't make sense to draw a conclusion about being straight/hetero.

Also, one of my friends, let's call her Claire, once told me that her attraction changes a lot, like one day she's only attracted to women, and a different day she's only attracted to men- I think she described this as "sexually fluid." (And later she found the term "abrosexual" and was very happy because she felt it totally fit.) Like, from day to day or week to week, her sexual orientation changes. This was very surprising to me, specifically, the idea of having a high enough frequency of data points that you can track changes on such short time scales. Wow! I very much cannot do that! I'm attracted to men, but on a typical day I probably won't meet any men I'm attracted to. (Except my husband because I live with him.) It's a really small percentage of men, and it's very normal for me to go for days or weeks without any of the men I meet being in that category. 

Really it's a super-interesting math question about how as you measure at higher and higher frequencies, any calculations you make about rates of change become less reliable because of noise. But, apparently, Claire had such a high frequency of being attracted to people, that she really could identify patterns on the scale of days or weeks. Wow! Cool!

(I can identify patterns on a time scale of years, personally.)

And, since it's about finding patterns, there could be 2 people with the same experiences, but one of them thinks those experiences show a pattern, and the other thinks those experiences are just exceptions that can be ignored, and so they use different identity labels. For example, maybe one person is bisexual, and one person is "I'm straight but I fooled around in college." Maybe it's a woman who usually dates men, but she has had a few sexual experiences with women here and there. Does she see those experiences with women as a key part of the overall pattern of her attraction? Then she might identify as bisexual. Or does she see herself as straight, and those were just small minor exceptions that don't really matter? Both interpretations are valid- it's a matter of what she feels like counts as a "pattern."

But, also, I've seen bi people who were unhappy about people labelling themselves as "straight but I fooled around in college" or "heteroflexible." The criticism was, people want to say their same-sex experiences don't "count", because they believe there's something *wrong* with being bi- so it's internalized bigotry against bi people. I think I come down on the side of "you shouldn't tell people what labels they're allowed to use" but also... maybe there's some truth to the argument that your own internal biases can have an effect on whether you identify something in your life as a "pattern" or an "exception."

Or, let's talk about the difference between asexual and gray-asexual. I think this difference is ALL ABOUT whether you personally perceive there to be a pattern in your own life or not. When I was first questioning if I was asexual, I was very concerned about how the exact definition says "no sexual attraction." What if I have had sexual attraction, at some point in my life, but I don't remember, or I didn't understand what it was? I can't prove that this never happened! How can I confidently ID as asexual? And eventually I concluded that since I can't figure out if I've ever experienced sexual attraction or not, that pretty much means I haven't- so I can ID as asexual. And also I was glad that the category of gray-asexual also exists, because then if I'm wrong and I actually have experienced sexual attraction, then that means I wasn't really that far off- asexual and gray-asexual are similar enough. It wouldn't be like... I'm a totally not-queer heterosexual person trying to invade the queer community because I want to label myself and be special.

But my point is, don't worry about "oh maybe I have had sexual attraction at some point in my life but I just didn't realize it" and think you're not allowed to ID as asexual. If it hasn't happened enough times that you can find a pattern to it, then you don't have to base your identity on it.

And what if you have experienced sexual attraction to exactly 1 person, throughout your whole life? Is that asexual or gray-asexual? Well, it could go either way, depending on whether you feel like it fits into a pattern that describes your identity, or it was just a weird thing that happened once and isn't really connected to the rest of your life. Perhaps you felt sexual attraction to 1 person, and you clearly understood that's what it was, and it feels like the sort of thing that could happen again- maybe then, you ID as gray-asexual. Or perhaps you felt sexual attraction, but the whole thing was confusing and seemed out of character for you, and you can't make sense of it- maybe you decide to ID as asexual then, because your overall pattern is being sexually attracted to no one, and this 1 experience just doesn't fit.

And maybe these hypothetical asexual and gray-asexual people actually had the exact same experience, and it's their own perspective and mental model of the world that leads them to conclude "this fits a pattern" or "this doesn't fit a pattern." Both interpretations are fine here. There's more to it than just your raw experience- it's also about the assumptions you use when you analyze your experiences to look for patterns.

(Gray-asexual can mean a lot of other things too- I recommend Siggy's post Many ways to be between.)

And I can talk about my own experiences with patterns or lack thereof. I'm straight, I know I'm straight because I'm a woman and I've been attracted to lots of guys, and not any women. Clearly a pattern. (Turns out, it wasn't sexual attraction though. It was other kinds of attraction.) Ever since I was in high school, if you asked me at any time who I'm attracted to, I could name offhand at least 1 of my friends/acquaintances and maybe a few celebrities. (Not that I would actually tell someone if they asked- that's none of their business.) Like, right now, there's my husband, and also Robert Downey Jr. (And more.)

Robert Downey Jr., as Tony Stark in the "Avengers" movies. Causing me to stumble. Image source.

And the patterns of how I'm attracted to guys have changed some, over the years. The ace concepts of romantic attraction/ sensual attraction/ aesthetic attraction are useful for analyzing that- but also, there are some other patterns I have which are more complicated. And I don't want to give details because it's my own feelings and not of interest to anybody else, but yeah I can identify patterns and see how some aspects of it have changed. But it always fit the definition of "straight."

So I can definitely talk about the overall patterns of how I experience attraction. And crushes. Plenty of those. But you know what I don't have a pattern for? Dating. I've only dated 3 people total (1 of them is my husband) and basically the whole time I felt like I was winging it and had NO IDEA what was going on. Every exciting development that happened was a huge surprise, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react. Every relationship problem we had, it felt like a completely unique situation, and I didn't have the faintest idea about general principles for how to solve those kinds of things.

(3 people total, not counting the times I went on dates without realizing they were dates.)

Here's an example from when I was dating my first boyfriend, let's call him BF1. So, we weren't officially dating yet, but we went out and spent the whole day together, and then had dinner at a restaurant, and I asked him, "So... are we dating?" and he said "I hope so" and I said "okay good." Is that normal? Is that how it usually works? Is that what I was supposed to say? I HAVE NO IDEA!

Like, how do people ask people out? How do people know when they're "officially" a couple? I don't know! I can tell you how it happened for me, these 3 times I've been in a dating relationship, but I definitely don't feel like my experiences are "normal" or like they fit into a bigger pattern of "how dating works."

And when we had relationship problems, I didn't have any sense of "yes, this is the sort of problem that happens sometimes in a relationship, and usually it's related to this underlying reason, and you can address it by doing this." No, it always felt like the problems that came up were completely unexpected, and I had no idea how to deal with them.

But... that could be because of purity culture. Because I followed purity ideology back then, I didn't really have any understanding of what healthy or unhealthy relationships look like. It was just "if you're not having sex, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you're both Christians, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you want to date someone, you have to pray about it and find out if God says you can date them." So if there was a relationship problem, all I could do was... like... not have sex (that's easy, of course we're not having sex) and... ask God what to do. And God's answers could be ANYTHING- I had no understanding of like... a general body of healthy advice that applies to pretty much all relationships.

So anyway, back then, when I was dating other guys before my husband (and also at the beginning of my relationship with my husband) I felt that the things that happened were unique reactions to the unique situations we were in, and not at all generalizable to some "this is what dating is like" idea. And when my friends tell me about their experiences with dating, they're not like mine at all. So I don't have a "pattern" for dating.

I also don't have a pattern for "what sex is like"- I only know what sex is like with my husband, and when other people talk about sex, it isn't relatable to me at all. So I have no idea what sex is like "in general." I always wonder, how many people do you have to date, before you can make generalizations about "how dating works"? How many people do you have to have sex with, before you can make generalizations about "how sex works"?

But, actually, it doesn't necessarily have to be about your own experience with sex and/or dating. It could also be observing your friends' relationships, seeing relationships in movies, etc, and feeling like they make sense to you.

Because, here's something interesting: I *do* make generalizations about marriage. Hmm, I've only been married to 1 person, and yet I often make statements like "this is what marriage is about." How can that be? 

I think it's because, when I hear other people describing the specific dynamics of their marriage, they feel similar to things I've experienced in my marriage. Things related to living with someone for so long that you know all their little quirky/annoying/charming habits. Things like, "in a marriage, there's always 1 person who turns on all the lights in the house, and 1 person who goes after them and turns all the lights off." (This is the biblical definition of marriage.) Or, here's a little piece of advice: Before you get married, you have to find out if your partner is the kind of person who can't stop talking about what other movies all the actors are in, every time you watch a movie. Or, this is cute- the husband who gathers a whole bunch of pillows and sets them up on the wife's side of the bed, because she likes to sleep with a lot of pillows. Knowing these little details about your partner's habits, and showing them love in the way you adapt your own habits to fit together with theirs. That's what marriage is about.

And I think that is something that can generalize to most happy marriages (or even most relationships where people live together long-term). When people talk about marriage- specifically, the very deep ways that people know each other so well and care for each other, as a natural result of being together for so long- it does feel relatable to me. (I love Taylor Swift's song "Lover" and Justin Timberlake's song "Mirrors" because they're about these long-term relationship dynamics.) So that's why I feel I can make generalizations about marriage. (Unless they're talking about sex in marriage, lol I still have no idea.)

So maybe it's not just about if a pattern exists or not- it's about your ability to recognize the pattern, and that's very much based on the examples you've seen from other people, and what patterns they describe. Many queer people have had the experience of hearing about an identity label, and suddenly it "clicks." They never had a way to make sense of their experiences and feelings before, but then this identity label comes along and describes a possible pattern, and they realize, wow, I fit this pattern!

So when you're thinking about orientation and what label to identify with, you don't have to take it literally when a label says it means "only" attracted to a certain gender, or "never" experiencing sexual attraction, or any other words like that. You can identify with a label while still having a few experiences here or there which are "exceptions" to it. You look at the overall pattern of your feelings and experiences. And it's totally possible that people with the same experiences would choose different identity labels, because they may reach different conclusions about what's a pattern and what's not.

---

Related:

Labels Are Useful When You're Far Enough From "Normal" That "Normal" Makes No Sense
OF COURSE Dating is Different as an Adult 
If One Partner Doesn't Want to Fix the Relationship, Then It's Just Not Fixable 
What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus) 

And these posts from Siggy: 
An ace perspective on single-target sexuality 
Shared Experience, Different Words

Update: sildarmillion wrote a response to this: Am I Straight Though? Or, Does Orientation Matter?

Blogaround

Two lab puppies playing in the snow. Image source.

1. Sunday favorites (posted February 18) The author of Isaiah says God has HAD ENOUGH "thoughts and prayers."

2. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "King George and the Ducky" (posted February 22)

3. Why Some Winter Olympic Sports Are "Faster, Higher, Stronger" For Men Only (posted February 22) "Apparently only two dudes can lay on top of each other and fly down the ice on a sled."

4. Why Janelle Monáe’s ‘Make Me Feel’ Is a Brilliant Bisexual Pop Anthem (posted February 23)

5. Where Billy Graham 'missed the mark' (posted February 22) "According to Martin, Graham would preach that 'all men are created equal under God,' but backtracked when segregationists criticized him by saying he 'followed the existing social customs' in whatever region of the country he preached. He sometimes accepted segregated seating at his crusades for fear of offending whites."

6. Answers in Genesis’ Tone-Deaf Rainbow Tussle (posted February 26) "In other words, Answers in Genesis’ message to the LGBTQ community is 'the rainbow is actually a symbol that you will burn with fire for your wickedness.'"

Blogaround

Patrick Stewart sitting among a bunch of pumpkins. Image source.

1. 7 Things You Need To Know To Be A Good Ally To An Intersex Person (posted October 23) "Despite numerous studies indicating infant genitoplasty does more harm than good, physicians in the U.S. and elsewhere still routinely perform medically unnecessary procedures on intersex babies."

2. On Bisexuality and Reformation Bingo (posted October 23) "For every one thing that I put out on the internet about bisexuality, I've got a couple of women at least emailing me, being like, 'That's also my story, I also came from purity culture, I'm married to a dude, I'm bisexual but like what's the point of coming out, etc etc.'"

3. This tweet in a Twitter thread of "biblical sexual ethics" (such as when Abraham set Sarah up to be sexually assaulted by Pharaoh). The whole thread is good, but that tweet in particular was shocking to me- it says "Leviticus 21:9. If the daughter of a priest has sex not in marriage, she is burned alive." It blew my mind to see that listed as an example of the bible being IMMORAL in terms of sexual ethics. Before, I always read that verse like it was about unmarried sex being a sin, which is a complicated topic we can debate- it's not something that's so clear that you would put it in a tweet to convince people the bible is wrong. But. No. The issue is not whether unmarried sex is a sin. The issue is the death penalty for having unmarried sex. And that is very obviously immoral- but I never noticed it before.

To me, sex was always this huge, scary, terrible thing that of course we shouldn't do. (Until you're married and it's suddenly the best thing ever, right?) It never occurred to me to think, "even if it is a sin, it doesn't deserve the death penalty."

4. Literally, Why Can’t I Say #MeToo? (posted October 16) [content note: descriptions of sexual assault] "I feel guilty using those words. I feel like I’m being dramatic."

5. Fooling Neural Networks in the Physical World with 3D Adversarial Objects (posted October 31) "Here is a 3D-printed turtle that is classified at every viewpoint as a “rifle” by Google’s InceptionV3 image classifier, whereas the unperturbed turtle is consistently classified as “turtle”." Cool!

Blogaround

Cow sitting like a dog. Image source.

1. When the evangelical establishment comes after you (posted July 17) "You have to realize that whatever abuse you are taking from evangelical authorities is nothing compared to the abuse that LGBTQ people have taken from pastors, teachers, parents, and “Christian friends” every day of their lives."

2. When gatekeepers attack (first-century edition) (posted July 17) "It helps, of course, that Peter seems to have corrected himself. There are different ways to place this story into the timeline of the book of Acts, but however that all fits together the end of the story is that Peter got his act together, finding the courage to embrace the Gentile believers in public the same way he had been doing in private."

3. Harry Potter Theory: Why Harry Had To Compete In The Tri-Wizard Tournament (posted August 3) "'Maybe death' is better than 'definite death', is a fact. Seriously why does everyone think this school is so safe?"

4. Theology, history, and context (posted July 23) "One reason has to do with fear. Many Christians have gotten the idea into their heads that their eternal salvation — whether they are destined for Heaven or Hell — is dependent on their having the proper ideas about theology. If one believes the wrong doctrine, one may be damned forever. And thus it is unthinkable and terrifying that one’s understanding of theology might be, in any way, contingent on context, or culture, or any other such accident of personal or national history."

5. Alliance Defending Freedom Through The Years (posted July 24) "The designation [as an anti-LGBT hate group] is a result of ADF’s propagation of known falsehoods about LGBT people over the years (including the conspiracy theory that there is a “homosexual agenda” or “homosexual legal agenda” to undermine “the family” and Christianity), its demonization of LGBT people, its support of criminalization of gay sex in the U.S. and abroad and its continued attempts to create state and local policies and legislation (so-called “religious liberty” laws) that allow Christians to deny goods and services to LGBT people in the public sphere and marginalize LGBT students in schools." Yes, ADF is an anti-queer hate group, 100%. I read their book, "The Homosexual Agenda," back then. I learned all the arguments about how legalizing same-sex marriage will destroy marriage and families. ADF is a propaganda machine which spreads dehumanizing lies about queer people (who, by the way, bear the image of God). ADF is a hate group. Back then, I believed all their bullshit, and I prayed to ask God to stop same-sex marriage from being legal. That memory is one of the main reasons I don't pray now. And I'm angry.

6. Crisis Pregnancy Centers: ‘You May Not Need An Abortion’ Because Maybe God Will Murder Your Baby! (posted July 27) Holy crap this is awful.

7. Bisexual, Not Broken (posted July) "If you try to tell others they are broken and in need of redemption because they experience sexuality outside of your carefully constructed binary box, I will fight you."

8. Medicine's Women Problem (posted July 28) "It takes an average of five years and five doctors for autoimmune patients (75% of whom are women) to get a proper diagnosis. And more than half of those report being labeled as 'chronic complainers.'"

9. The Wicked Problems of Jails and Prisons (posted July 26) "But the trouble in my experience, as Coakley notes in the last sentence of the quote above, is that if a chaplain attempts more than palliative care, and begins to offer theological reflections on the justice of the system, they risk being labeled as politically subversive and kicked out of the jail/prison."

Blogaround

A group of labrador puppies, sleeping in a row. Alternating between yellow and black puppies. Image source.

1. Do you remember your first time? (posted 2014) [content note: descriptions of assault by medical staff] "I remember the first time I was treated by force."

2. The Obamacare provision that saved thousands from bankruptcy (posted March 2) "This Obamacare provision took effect September 23, 2010. Timmy was born September 29. On December 17, he surpassed $1 million worth of bills in the neonatal intensive care unit. He didn’t leave the NICU until he was 6 months old."

3. Feeding the hungry is a Good Thing (posted March 16) "The disagreement is about something far simpler, far more basic and fundamental. Some people think that preserving the health, nutrition, and dignity of older Americans is an important Good Thing. And other people do not."

4. A Janitor Preserves the Seized Belongings of Migrants (posted March 12) "He’d always known, technically, about the C.B.P.’s strict confiscation policies, which were posted on bilingual signs and applied to all items classified as either “non-essential” or “potentially lethal.” But he hadn’t spent much time thinking about these policies, and he hadn’t realized how broadly they were applied, or just how many of the confiscated items—including cell phones and wallets, many still containing I.D.s, prepaid debit cards, and cash—were ending up in the trash, never to be returned."

5. The audacious claim that we are not shaped by history (posted March 21) "That claim is this: Hundreds of years of slavery and a century of Jim Crow oppression had no effect on the shape of American Christianity."

6. How University Professors React to Requests for Disability Accommodations (posted 2015) "Universities tend to work on a reporting system so if something goes wrong, students are put in the position of reporting the bad behaviour of people who have power over their academic success."

7. Why I’m Done Being A ‘Good’ Mentally Ill Person (posted March 27) "We see this kind of ableism most distinctly when we categorically divide up disabled people into “higher” and “lower” functioning — which can be a coded way of saying, 'These are the people that can conform to society’s expectations of what a ‘typical’ person should be, and these are the people who fail to do that.'"

8. 'Sightings' of extinct Tasmanian tiger prompt search in Queensland (posted March 27) Cool!

9. Science, reality and ‘persecuted Christians’ (posted March 27) "Dinosaurs are cool, but these poor folks aren’t able to fully enjoy the latest cool news about cool dinosaurs because they’ve convinced themselves that they’re obliged to hear every such bit of news as a kind of attack on their faith."

10. can you explain why "straight passing privilege" isnt a thing? (posted 2014) "regardless of your sexual orientation, the vast majority of people are going to assume you’re straight all the time unless you are doing something specifically coded as being romantic or sexual with someone of the same gender (or someone who is assumed to be the same gender) at that exact moment. still in the closet? straight. went out to grab dinner with someone of a different gender than you? straight. hanging out with your friends? straight. stepped out of the house to get milk? straight."

Blogaround

A cute little doggy, looking slightly guilty because it stole a CD. Image source.

1. We Had Abortions, and Here’s What That ‘Jane the Virgin’ Story Line Meant to Us (posted November 7) "According to the Guttmacher Institute, Latinxs make up about 25 percent of people having abortions, and roughly two-thirds of people having abortions are already parents. And yet, very few story lines show either."

2. The Syrians Next Door (posted November 3) "The twins do not remember a time before the war. They recall the whooshing sound a bomb makes when it drops from a plane. They know that when the bomb lands nearby, the whole building shudders and solid walls can ripple like water. When the shelling started, the family often squeezed themselves into the cabinets under the kitchen counter. At night, all five of the kids would climb into their parents’ bed and hide under the blankets. 'You want to find a safe place to hide the children,' Abdul Fattah says. 'But there is no safe place.'"

3. Harry Potter Theory: The True Path Of The Elder Wand (posted November 8) Wow this is complicated.

4. Enough with the fear of fat (May 2016) "Throughout my career, I have learned that fat bodies are inherently political. And unapologetic fat bodies can blow people's minds."

5. 7 Ways To (Re) Come Out As Bisexual (posted November 12) "Bring some 16th century realness to your coming out by hiring a court announcer to introduce you before entering every room."

[content note: links below are about the election]

1. How Trump Conned America (posted November 11)

2. Over 200 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since Election Day (posted November 11) HOLY SHIT.

3. Empathy for the Devil (posted November 4) "Christianity carries with it a mandate for universal empathy that can often prove utterly inconsistent with African-American survival, let alone advancement. Too many times, we're asked to understand those who have opposed or even terrorized us, while expecting no such consideration in return."

4. If Donald Trump wins, I will blame toxic Christianity and here’s why (posted November 3) "'Make America Great Again' is a slogan for people who believe that humanity is fallen; 'Better Together' is a slogan for people who believe that humanity is good."

5. Alarmism saved my family from Hitler: Why I won’t tell anyone to calm down about Trump (posted November 10) Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace.

6. Trump alone cannot overturn marriage equality, but that is not the point (posted November 12) "Ask yourself this – how many Kim Davises are there out there who will be emboldened to break the law when your gay, bisexual, lesbian or transgender neighbors apply for their marriage license with a partner of the same gender? How quickly do you think a Trump administration will be to force them to obey the law?"

7. White evangelicalism is white nationalism. (posted November 9) "Yesterday, white evangelicals again voted for white nationalism. They supported a candidate who explicitly and unambiguously made white nationalism the centerpiece and driving passion of his campaign. The fig-leaf for this support was abortion."

8. The Cinemax Theory of Racism (posted November 10) "And others say to you, that’s fine, but you knew that to get the other parts, you had to sign on for the racism, too. And evidently you were okay with that."

9. I’m a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America (posted November 10)

10. Are Progressives Crying Wolf? Not So Fast. (posted November 14) "During the primary, Trump banned news agencies from his press corps if they wrote too critically about him. He said that libel laws need to be opened up so that he can sue the press for reporting he feels isn’t accurate. This is unprecedented."

11. ‘N****rs’ slur defaces MLK Center in Spokane: ‘Do not pretend that these are isolated incidents’ (posted November 15) Holy shit.

12. On the Abortion Trump Card (posted November 12) "And to support Trump on pro-life grounds is effectively to say that her life, which is actually unfolding, which she is currently experiencing, which she had planned and dreamed and hoped for, is worth less than the purely biological life of someone who hasn’t even been born yet. Is this the moral high ground, or a sick parody of moral deliberation?"